Sorry to say it, but keyboard and mouse are losing the FPS market

Destiny's console focus reflects an unfortunate business reality.

Considering that the PC is the platform that birthed both the first-person shooter and the MMO, many PC game fans are a bit perturbed that Activision and Bungie have yet to confirm a PC version of its recently unveiled FPS-meets-MMO Destiny. Bungie co-founder Jason Jones threw a bit more fuel on the fire of perceived PC gaming disrespect, though, by telling Destructoid that, in essence, Halo made keyboard and mouse controls obsolete:

We did a bunch of ambitious things on Halo deliberately to reach out to people. We limited players to two weapons, we gave them recharging health, we automatically saved and restored the game—almost heretical things to first-person shooters at the time. We made the game run without a mouse and keyboard. And now nobody plays shooters the way they used to play them before Halo 'cause nobody wants to. [emphasis added]

Taken literally, this statement is inaccurate on its face. There are obviously still millions of people playing first-person shooters on their PCs with a mouse and keyboard (and more than a few games that don't have recharging health, automatic saves, and the like). But Jones' general point is clear: keyboard-and-mouse players are getting less and less important, from a business perspective, in the console-dominated first-person shooter market that Halo spawned. On this point, it's really hard to argue with Jones.

Reliable, confirmed sales information for most video games is notoriously hard to come by. Getting breakdowns of those sales between PC and non-PC platforms is even harder, especially when you have to take into account digital sales data that's often not shared with the public. That said, when such information can be culled for the most popular first-person shooters, it's usually no contest: the number of PC players is dwarfed by the console audience.

Let's start with the current best-selling franchise in all of gaming: Call of Duty. The best console-specific data I could find for the series of late was first-month sales statistics for Black Ops released by NPD back in 2010. Apparently the game sold 8 million copies on the PS3 and Xbox 360 combined and less than 400,000 on the PC. Even if the unreported digital sales on the PC were ten times as strong as those at retail, and assuming that PC piracy added another 50 percent on top of legitimate downloads, that would still mean there were roughly four console players using a controller for every three playing the PC version in the game's first month. That adds up to a deficit of millions of people for the mouse-and-keyboard crowd, and one that's likely compounded by other Call of Duty games.

I found a similar trend in practically every multi-platform first-person shooter I could find reliable sales or play data for. BF3Stats.com shows 8 million people combined played the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Battlefield 3 over 2012, compared to just 3.1 million players on the PC. The PC version of the original Bioshocksold a million copies through June 2008, but the game sold 2.2 million copies overall [PDF] in that time, meaning the console versions were a little more popular. Even Valve's own Left 4 Dead franchise sold over 6 million units on consoles out of roughly 11 million total sales [MP4 link] through May 2011, meaning the PC version lost out yet again.

Looking at the popularity of platform-exclusive titles doesn't really help make the keyboard-and-mouse popularity case either, I'm afraid. Steam data shows a peak of about 70,000 people playing Team Fortress 2 concurrently on Steam yesterday, but Halo 4 peaked at about 75,000 players (down from an astounding 400,000+ concurrent players at launch), according to HaloCharts.com. Counter-Strike and CS: Source may combine for about 100,000 peak concurrent players on Steam in an average day, but Gears of War 3managed 300,000 simultaneous players on launch day, and Gears of War 2had a million people playing simultaneously at launch [PDF, page 5] (yes, these games are "third-person" shooters and may have dropped off significantly post launch, but the data argues a similar point).

The only exception to the "shooters tend to sell better on consoles" rule that I could find was Portal 2, which Gabe Newell told Gamasutra "did better on the PC than it did on the consoles," through May 2012.

Obviously, a comprehensive count of the number of first-person shooter players on consoles versus PCs is impossible to compile. But the anecdotal data I was able to dredge up makes it pretty clear that PC keyboard-and-mouse players are not the dominant market for first-person shooters anymore (and that's not even taking into account the non-zero number of PC players who actually use a gamepad on an FPS for whatever reason). This isn't a subjective matter of taste or a reflection on the gameplay superiority of one control scheme or the other. This is purely a matter of numbers—and in that matter, the keyboard and mouse have been overtaken.

This is what Jones' "Halo changed everything," quote is really getting at. Like it or not, the market has shown that the PC is no longer automatically the most lucrative platform for a serious first-person shooter. This is the business reality Activision and Bungie are working in when developing Destiny. That doesn't mean they should ignore the still-sizable PC market (and there's still a good chance a PC version of Destiny will be announced before the game comes out sometime after 2013), or that the PC doesn't bring other gameplay and performance benefits that consoles can't match. But arguing that first-person shooter players are overwhelmingly demanding those mouse-and-keyboard controls that only the PC can provide is just not a valid argument.

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The article is looking at it the wrong way. Keyboard and mouse are the pinnacle, and controllers are the masses.

In my case, I pick up a controller to play games when I would like to sit back and relax. I go to kb&m when I want to perform optimally.

Another thing to consider is that many, MANY fps games don't have the challenge factor needed to make a kb&m necessary, they are deliberately dumbed-down to not need it. Aim assists, large hitboxes, etc.

Last thing in my opinion is that the barrier to entry for playing a demanding fps on a pc is significantly higher than the cost of the console. Consider the crowd, their wallets, etc.

Just because everyone can drive a Ford Focus doesn't mean that people will not be buying Lamborghinis. The Lamborghinis are fewer and further between though, and at the end of the day they both get you someplace.

I am confused as to why Team Fortress 2 is compared to Halo 4. TF2 was released in 2007. It's over five years old. That is still gets 70,000 concurrent players is a massive argument in favor of PC gaming on kb/m. Especially when a first-tier console FPS that's less than six months old is struggling to stay ahead of it.

All that said, there is a lot of truth to this article. I now play third-person games with a controller, even on PC. Civilization will likely play nicer when it's designed for touch input (come on Civ 6!). There are a lot of other games I don't see easily translating to controller input, though. An RTS in particular is a difficult one. I only know of one RTS on the console that had a decent input, and it used voice. Not exactly always a possible input in a household.

I might as well say touchscreens are players favorite control scheme! Oh no the controller is doomed!

Seems like fluff, its quite the apples to orange comparison. Do people not WANT to play with keyboard and mouse, or do they simply prefer the couch-comfort that a console provides? I'd argue that it's significantly the latter.

If players had the option of using a keyboard and mouse with and it was as convenient as a controller to sit down and play with on a console, people would. But its impossible to say one is losing to the other when you simply cannot make a 1:1 comparison. Controllers and touchscreens have very high marketshare, just because of where we're playing our games, but that's not a comment about the quality of the control scheme..... the only thing being said is that controllers are convenient. (yay?)

My keyboard costs the same as 6 xbox controllers, my mouse costs the same as 3. My sound system easily costs as much as the whole damn console. I consider myself a high end gamer - when I play, but I'm not even comparable to a Ferrari - not yet. When I drop another $1200 on my computer's CPU+mobo+RAM+PSU and another $400 or $500 on its GPU, I'll go ahead and compare my system to a Lamborghini or a Ferrari.

I'm not quite bragging (okay, I am. I'm damn proud of my setup), but you're comparing wagons to sports cars, here. I don't intend to be snobbish, but my 3D mouse makes a helluva good joystick and 6 degrees of freedom means I'll dance circles around any person using their little controller to play in a game with me.

(Monocle please, yes, AHEM, quite). What I'm saying is that console gaming with a controller isn't even in the same class. When I want a greasy burger of a game with the service of a Mcdonalds and a platform life expectancy that's less than a McDonalds salad in an airplane's cockpit - I'll consider a console. However, over the past decade since I started my PC gaming hobby with a $10 mouse and a keyboard salvaged from an extremely old system (one I still have hooked up today via PS/2), I have not found myself ever wanting to go from 3 multi-course meals with full wait staff - every day - back to trash food made from ethically questionable sources that leaves me with a case of indigestion when I'm required to vomit it back up when I leave the restaurant because I unwittingly signed a contract requiring as much when I entered the restaurant.

Food for rent, not for sale.

This is comparing (however-many-years-old-their-platform-is) year old apples to cruise ship parties serving orange juice sangrias. . .maybe that's unfair. Maybe they're just comparing plain, boring-but-fresh (it IS a new IP, after all) fruit to the party on the cruise ship.

Taking them seriously is almost as if taking a claim that the 3DS was the future of 3D gaming even though to my knowledge, it's the largest 3D gaming platform in existence today.

Unrelated to stats concerns, I like different control methods for different games. Shocking! Sometimes I use a controller, sometimes K+M. Sometimes I use both for the same game! I use both control methods on consoles and computers. You can plug things into the USB ports on your gaming console.

As other have said, the console v. comp debate is about price of the hardware, not the stupid input method. Also, publisher control of content is easier on consoles. That might have something to do with why they like to go that way at the big houses.

I think some of the commenters who are using analogies like "Ferrari vs. Ford Focus" are missing a critical point: Of course there will always be people who have the budget and desire to play using kb/mouse on an expensive rig. But cars aren't a good analogy because the problem is the availability of the GAMES. It doesn't matter if you are willing to buy that PC and use it, if your market segment is so small that the developers abandon it. The car analogy would be if a Ferrari required special Ferrari fuel to run. If it did, guess what... the market for Ferrari's would pretty much vanish.

The point is that the players are dependent on the developers. If the developers start developing only for consoles or controllers, it won't matter how much you want to play with kb/mouse/PC... the games won't be there.

It's not that keyboard and mouse are losing the market; it's that console games have always sold in bigger numbers than PC games. People act as though this is a new thing, but it's not.

Let's look at just two examples. World of Warcraft is largely seen as one of the biggest PC successes ever, right?

At it's peak it had 12 million subscribers. A massive amount.

Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold over 40 million copies.

Console gaming has always and likely will always be a much larger market than PC gaming. It's just a reality. Anyone who's surprised or disturbed by this has had their head in the sand.

Because of the market reality there will always be developers (and thus games, and series) which target exclusively or at least prioritize the console market. Don't be shocked. Don't be dismayed. Accept it and move on with your life.

EDIT:

In anticipation of people complaining about my use of WoW as an example, I chose it because we have at least some figures on sales. But if you want to go with a non-subscription example, Counter Strike (one of the most successful PC FPS games of all time) has sold 27 million copies across all platforms including consoles.

Yet a long anticipated game for the PS3 is giving players the option of the KB+M... Consoles haven't been able to support the KB+M until relatively recently. Had they given their gamers the option I bet more Pc gamers would have made the switch. Now we see console games declining and PC gaming hardware sales rising.

This is dumb for two reasons. One is that comparing subscribers to one-time sales is silly, high subscriber numbers obviously give you more revenue in the long run. The second is that Super Mario Bros. for the NES was a pack-in game.

And now nobody plays shooters the way they used to play them before Halo 'cause nobody wants to.

Look, I liked Halo, but this is the biggest load of shit I've ever heard. I count 35 games in my Steam library right now that use the mouse and keyboard. The shitty controller and the handicaps that go along with it will never be better than the keyboard and mouse. The only advantage that a controller has had over the K&M is analog movement, that's it. This is obviously the talk of a person that wants to hype their game, not speak the truth.

Article wrote:

Apparently the game sold 8 million copies on the PS3 and Xbox 360 combined and less than 400,000 on the PC. Even if the unreported digital sales on the PC were ten times as strong as those at retail, and assuming that PC piracy added another 50 percent on top of legitimate downloads, that would still mean there were roughly four console players using a controller for every three playing the PC version in the game's first month. That adds up to a deficit of millions of people for the mouse-and-keyboard crowd, and one that's likely compounded by other Call of Duty games.

You forget that almost every single PC release of those games are shitty console ports with no options to actually leverage the advantage that comes with being played on a PC, and they want entirely too much money for the pile of buggy shit they release. Every CoD release and Modern Warfare port are utter shit compared to a game that is made to use the PC to its fullest rather than be something to try and make more money. It's really rather easy to see why those games sell poorly on the PC, and they use that to say "SEE! PC gamers don't play shooters like console players do!!1!" You give them a shit product, it's no wonder people don't buy it.

Fallacious reasoning leads to fallacious arguments. Your anecdotal evidence is just that, anecdotal. You cannot say with any conviction or accuracy that the K&M are less popular simply because you don't have accurate numbers.

Dear Ars editors: you might want to speed up your approval queue for articles. Apparently one of your writers wrote one of those "PC gaming is dead" articles a few years back, as were so popular at the time, and it only got posted on the site now.

Yes, but you still can't play shooters on a console without corrective auto-aiming. Those controllers just aren't accurate enough to recreate the precision of a mouse. See the failed CS:GO crossplay attempts for an example of how wide the disparity is.

Now we see console games declining and PC gaming hardware sales rising.

That's just because the current generation of consoles is 6-7 years old now. It doesn't mean the death of console games any more than high console game sales means the death of PC games. It's just silly chicken little syndrome.

Or maybe, the PC market has moved on from FPSes, while they're still the rage in Consoles.

Console controllers have been the ONLY option open to console gamers for decades. It's only been recently that consoles started supporting the KB+M but game designers have failed to give us e the option of using them. this is a case of the developers choosing which controls you will use instead of the gamers deciding.

Yes, but you still can't play shooters on a console without corrective auto-aiming. Those controllers just aren't accurate enough to recreate the precision of a mouse. See the failed CS:GO crossplay attempts for an example of how wide the disparity is.

This is why MS would not allow PC gamers to play against console gamers even though they could do it. The KB+M players would wipe the map with the console gamers exactly because of what you describe.

FPS games are stagnant and repetitive. Give me something more creative, like portal was, and ill play it all day. I've played a lot of console games, but they don't compare to PC. Halo was successful because it was very simple for a lot of young gamers who probably didn't have access to a decent PC for gaming when it came out.

When they get a game where you can get a proper mouse control (i.e., not the UE3 engine style soupy mouse control) and can play together with the console owners as well as gaining the same achievements and see what will happen.

Or for that matter, allowing good kb/m controls on a console. There's a good reason why they've never done that.

Bungie's new game is called Destiny. You even link to an article about it. Massive editing fail.

Massive indeed. All FPSes starting with "De" are the same, right?

In penance for my mistake, I'm going to play Aliens: Colonial Marines for the rest of the day.

You should do so on a console.

So that when consoles die and PC-based FPS games continue to appear, you can remember how stupid you should feel.

Consoles have a much larger market of 12-year-olds who are the primary consumers of crappy run-of-the-mill FPS games like post-MW COD and Halo.

Consoles can barely compete on price in the next generation ($699 for a machine that's outdated before they can even mock up a prototype, really?), and the more they try to compete on capability the less need people will see for them. All it's going to take is someone (coughvalvecough) releasing a good HTPC.

I'm going to go ahead an say that there are two different markets in the broad FPS market. Toms Hardware had a nice article on a cancelled Microsoft project that had cross console/PC online play. a The feature was cancelled because the PC players were destroying the console players. Saying that the PC and Console markets are the same would be wrong. Some games may be on both platforms but the skill levels aren't going to be the same.

If you're playing Battlefield 3 on a PC with a controller then I'm going to assume that you aren't going to do very well. Halo and Call of Duty aren't games I would call High skill level and Gears of War isn't even a FPS. Nobody's going to play Counter Strike with a Mouse and Keyboard. Some game's can't be played with a controller (just finished a round of Dota2)

There is a lot about preference and a lot to do with what works per game. On a console you have no choice. I personally think Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Bioshock both on PC are better with a controller than mouse and keyboard. I don't need to be very precise in these games to land a sword blow.

Now we see console games declining and PC gaming hardware sales rising.

That's just because the current generation of consoles is 6-7 years old now. It doesn't mean the death of console games any more than high console game sales means the death of PC games. It's just silly chicken little syndrome.

I know I'm just an anecdote. But I'm buying a PC right now because: 1. I'm bored with FPS, and that's basically all you get on consoles. 2. I want to play strategy games, and these are unplayable on consoles (I've tried, it sucks). 3. If I'm gonna sign my life over to a DRM scheme it might as well be Valve's, it's unlikely to be Microsoft's and won't be Sony's.

The fact that my 360 has old hardware doesn't matter to me. I have zero complaints with how awesome the games look. Could they look better, yes. Do I care, no.

I really hope this isn't a preclude to horrendous keyboard controls to make it more equal. Or simply requiring a controller. There doesn't really seem a good reason to trash talk part of your market though, regardless of whether it's 50% or 20%, that's still piles of money

And it ignores the fact that Halo was at its core built purely around the Xbox controller, the series plays at a perfect speed for it, has fantastic hitboxes and an aim assist that isn't completely grating, and leverages the XBOX Live environment in probably the best way I've seen.

Pretty much everything else I've seen just plays better on mouse and keyboard. Halo: CE just feels off and floaty on K&M.

According to Kyle Orland, not being in first place means "losing the market". I guess Microsoft, Honda, Dreamworks and Ars Technica are all losers and the market should pay no attention.

When you are second place in the two-way battle between controllers and K+M, then yes, you are losing. It doesn't mean PCs are doomed or that no one will ever make another PC FPS or that K+M sucks or anything like that. It's just numbers.

3. If I'm gonna sign my life over to a DRM scheme it might as well be Valve's, it's unlikely to be Microsoft's and won't be Sony's.

What many people trying to be clever about calling people out for hating DRM on consoles but loving Steam is that you can get an entire studios library on Steam for $60-100. I don't care what kind of DRM exists on a platform that offers that kind of deal, at less than the cost of a BigMac meal DRM doesn't mean shit. Sales on games you can't resell on Steam make up the difference many times over. I don't have the time to play ever new release that comes out, so when I finally get around to playing the games I want they are usually 25-75% of release price. That beats the tar out of console DRM any day, every day. Steam is a fantastic system and people trying to be cute calling people out for being hypocritical can't see past the end of their own nose. I agree fully, if I'm getting locked into a system it'll be the one that sells games every three months at a massive discount rather than a platform that wants me to pay them a monthly fee to have my hardware do something other than heat the room it's in.

This is dumb for two reasons. One is that comparing subscribers to one-time sales is silly, high subscriber numbers obviously give you more revenue in the long run. The second is that Super Mario Bros. for the NES was a pack-in game.

I chose WoW because sales numbers of PC games can be hard to track down because so many big PC series also get released for console as well and you end up with combined numbers.

And I picked SMB for the NES as an example of just how big the console market can be.

The point was not to say "WoW was a failure." that's obviously not the case. I was illustrating the size of what is a mainstream product (consoles) vs the fact that even the biggest hit of hit PC games doesn't approach the same levels.

After doing a little bit more digging, I found that the Sims 2 is supposedly the biggest selling PC game of all time with 20 million copies. There's at least 4 games for the Wii alone that exceed that number which aren't bundled games. And there's quite a lot of games for all the modern consoles that approach that figure; far more than there are for PC.

It's just a reality; console games are a bigger market, until we reach this point in the lifecycle where the consoles are showing their age and people have lost interest in them.

I don't know why this has to be a point of contention, or why it's always a debate of "Platform X is clearly dying!" It's a load of shit. I have a PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS and an iPhone. I play games on all of them. They're all fun. People need stop treating games like it's a religion.

Yes, but you still can't play shooters on a console without corrective auto-aiming. Those controllers just aren't accurate enough to recreate the precision of a mouse. See the failed CS:GO crossplay attempts for an example of how wide the disparity is.

Exactly.

A developer can create a really crappy implementation of control scheme A and a really good implementation of control scheme B, leading players to use control scheme B.

Does that mean control scheme A is crap? No. (But it may mean the developer is crap.)

According to Kyle Orland, not being in first place means "losing the market". I guess Microsoft, Honda, Dreamworks and Ars Technica are all losers and the market should pay no attention.

When you are second place in the two-way battle between controllers and K+M, then yes, you are losing. It doesn't mean PCs are doomed or that no one will ever make another PC FPS or that K+M sucks or anything like that. It's just numbers.

Numbers you admit you don't have, and can't get. You also ignore the fact that console games ported over to PC are usually unplayable and don't take advantage of anything on the PC to make it worthy of the asking price. Those games don't sell on PC because they are garbage, not because people are moving away from shooters on PC or the K&M and don't have any validity of indicating people are moving away from one an to the other. Your article makes wild assumptions, ignores reality, and presents anecdotal evidence as fact.

The article is looking at it the wrong way. Keyboard and mouse are the pinnacle, and controllers are the masses.

In my case, I pick up a controller to play games when I would like to sit back and relax. I go to kb&m when I want to perform optimally.

Another thing to consider is that many, MANY fps games don't have the challenge factor needed to make a kb&m necessary, they are deliberately dumbed-down to not need it. Aim assists, large hitboxes, etc.

Last thing in my opinion is that the barrier to entry for playing a demanding fps on a pc is significantly higher than the cost of the console. Consider the crowd, their wallets, etc.

Just because everyone can drive a Ford Focus doesn't mean that people will not be buying Lamborghinis. The Lamborghinis are fewer and further between though, and at the end of the day they both get you someplace.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.